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God is the one being for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act, because he is exalting for us what alone can satisfy us fully and forever. If we exalt ourselves, we are not loving, because we distract people from the one Person who can make them happy forever, God. But if God exalts himself, he draws attention to the one Person who can make us happy forever, himself. He is not an egomaniac. He is an infinitely glorious, all-satisfying God, offering us everlasting and supreme joy in himself.

The term egomania is often used by laypersons in a pejorative fashion to describe an individual who is intolerably self-centred.

I think this is what we mean, correct? "Intolerably" is subjective, but "self-centered" is undeniable.

There is a psychological condition which the term refers to as well:

Egomania is obsessive preoccupation with one's self and applies to someone who follows their own ungoverned impulses and is possessed by delusions of personal greatness and feels a lack of appreciation.

So far, the only difference between this and God is that in God's case, they're not delusions. But otherwise:

God is preoccupied with himself.

He follows his own ungoverned impulses.

He must feel a lack of appreciation; why else would he demand worship?

That's the accusation. Here's the rebuttal you quoted:

God is the one being for whom self-exaltation is the most loving act...

Wait, why is that relevant? What does "Loving" have to do with either of the definitions of egomania above?

But if God exalts himself, he draws attention to the one Person who can make us happy forever, himself.

I'm still not seeing what this has to do with any of the claims above. Nowhere is it claimed that egomania requires self-centered-ness that does not result in others being lifted up as well.

If I walked down to a homeless shelter and started handing out a thousand dollars to everyone who said "SanityInAnarchy is great!", that's undeniably egotistical, and undeniably charitable. The two are not mutually exclusive. God can be both charitable and egomaniachal in the same act.

Piper would have done better to start with God's ontology – his Triune nature. Why? Because God in three persons entails a self-relation unlike any other being.

Christians, for a long time, have said God and love are identical.

It would be difficult to imagine how love itself could exist without objects to be loved. God in his infinite nature is loving in and of himself through the Trinitarian relationship: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Unlike the Judaic or Islamic formulations of God, the Trinity is completely self-sufficient in exercising love. Before and without a Creation of any kind, God loves. In his essence is love.

To posit God as an egomaniac is to indict a god whose ontological nature is fundamentally unlike the one Christians profess. In other words, you're making a category mistake. Understandable, but a mistake nonetheless.

I respectfully disagree. You avoided the very substance of the post you responded to.

The Trinity, by definition, is still only one god with no external relationship to anything to love (before the creation)

This is demonstrably false: John 1:1

1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made

Since you're unclear on the Trinity, here's Wiki.

The doctrine of the Trinity defines God as three divine persons or hypostases: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; "one God in three persons". The three persons are distinct, yet are one "substance, essence or nature".

But still only one God. But that still misses the point of your version of god creating an entire universe for the sole purpose of forcing beings to worship him or be tortured for all eternity. If that's not egomanical I don't know what is.

This ignores the issue of mankind's free will, and the fact that it was us that messed up. I know that brings in the whole issue of free will and God's sovereignty, as everything seems to do... but yeah.

But that still misses the point of your version of god creating an entire universe for the sole purpose of forcing beings to worship him

He doesn't force anyone to worship him. The way we're created, we're inclined to worship one way or another. We either worship him, and achieve everlasting joy, or something else, sinfully, and fall into a trap of incompleteness.

or be tortured for all eternity.

While turning away from God will earn you eternal wrath, not worshipping him is its own kind of suffering.

Those two options were supposed to be a dichotomy. He doesn't force people to worship him, he forces people to make the decision to either worship or submit to eternal torture. If you still don't see the egotism in this then you, sir, are thoroughly deluded.

Christians have claimed that god and love are identical, but why should anyone else accept this as a real claim rather than being poetical? Under what definition of love is god identical? Seems like anyone you pick there are plenty of examples where this isn't true. Do you have some non standard definition you mean when equating god and love?

This is the old dodge that anything that God does that would be bad in another is good because he is God and entitled.

If another killed millions of people, that would be murder and genocide. If another ordered the rape of captives, that would be rape. But since God's the source of all law and morality, whatever God does is, by definition, good and lawful.

So god can slaughter, but it's not murder because murder is, by definition, a wrongful killing. God can order rapes, but since rape is sex without consent and God's our creator and can thus give permission, it's not rape. God can create a lesser species destined to suffer because he does so to get subjects who will praise him or suffer eternally. It's ok, because God has the right to love himself that much and insist that others do so, too. Because he knows what's best.

If your god acts like a murderer or an egomaniac, understand that we might call him such because his behavior is vile, not because we are debating his theoretical right to be as he is.

If your god acts like a murderer or an egomaniac, understand that we might call him such because his behavior is vile, not because we are debating his theoretical right to be as he is.

We're standing on two different moral paradigms. In mine, God is the foundation of morality. That which is good is that which aligns with God's with good revealed will; that which is bad is that which is contrary to God's revealed will. Your moral paradigm is something different; something having to do with decreasing suffering and increasing pleasure, I would think.

You cannot criticize God for being vile because the criticism itself presupposes his existence. In a world where his existence is presupposed, the answer provided to your objection is from his revelation: the Bible. And those answers are delineated by John Piper in the sermon above. To say that God is vile is to assume that he should adhere to your standard of morality. In what universe should God adhere to your standard of morality? Why?

I don't believe our paradigms differ so vastly. Leaving aside for the moment whether or not we can judge a god by the same standards as humans, give me an example of a part of your moral code where an act is morally just even though it decreases health and wellbeing and increases suffering. I posit that we share the same moral code on that most basic level, you just add that you think that that code comes from your god. We also disagree in some areas on the facts we plug in when we make our evaluation under that code. You believe in a punishing and rewarding god, I don't. But that's not a different code, just applying it differently because of a different interpretation of the facts at hand.

How do we know that God's will is good? Simply by definition? Do we know that God is good because the Bible tells us so and know that the Bible is right in that regard because God inspired it, God is Good, therefore God can't lie? What if God had a different will? Would it still be good? Do we know that what God tells us to do is right because of divine fiat as to what's right or wrong or because God knows everything so even if we can't see it God knows facts we don't that result in what he commands ultimately increasing our wellbeing/health and decreasing our pain?

We are told that God is good and we should believe in it because it is worthy of worship therefore. If God were evil, would you still worship? If so, on what basis? That might makes right?

If your God is all good, all knowing, and all powerful then such attributes should be readily apparent. In looking to see if that's true, I look to see if the story you rely on portrays him as such. As Twain says, never has a book spent so much time telling us that a character in it is good and yet did such a poor job of showing it by the character's conduct.

We don't judge the character in the book because we assume (presuppose) that it is real any more than we judge Iago by assuming he really existed. Assuming that the god's real requires suspending reason in order to reach a conclusion before we begin to examine the facts. Before we take such a leap from reason, we should see if the character of God makes sense. One way we do this is seeing if it really is good when the story says it is. We apply the same standard that everyone applies, believer or not. Does it increase wellbeing and decrease pain? You ask me to ignore the seemingly universal standard, instead saying we should just enter into the circular reasoning that God is good because God says God's good and a good god doesn't fib.

We judge god by the universal standard of morality because it's a way of checking before we believe we should see whether the god makes sense. Are the attributes described even possible? Does God really seem to possess them? If that first hurdle is cleared then is God worth worshiping? Who would want to worship an amoral or even immoral god? If god were evil, presupposing that it's good would prevent us, by mere assumption of circular reasoning, from ever seeing that truth.

The OP praised the position that God is an egotist, and he should be. So it wasn't a denial of egotism, just an excuse for a god with such a stunning lack of humility and a lack of concern for how many people will suffer as a result.

The difference, of course, is that an abusive husband is wrong in his assertion and is human, mortal, limited, ignorant, created, fallible and sinful. God is transcendent, immortal, a se, perfectly wise and our creator.

Listen, when I went through my deconversion it was the most agonizing and painful thing I had to deal with in my life. God didn't listen nor care about what I was going through, you know why? He isn't real, if he were real and interested in saving me he would have saved me all those times I cried out to him during that long 2 years--I mean I was already his. So don't spew that fucking shit about people enjoying turning away from god when you obviously don't know what you're talking about.

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

Many people don't enjoy deconversion, as lawyersgunsmoney comments. But for those who think they do, they're self-deceived.

Many people don't enjoy deconversion, as lawyersgunsmoney comments. But for those who think they do, they're self-deceived.

That's a pretty ballsy statement, telling other people that they are deceiving themselves by doing something I would be willing to bet you have never done. They don't enjoy deconversion because it's often painful to do in a religious society. Doing it in Norway could be fun. Beyond that, it's a much better worldview for people to have and it's very beneficial psychologically.

But if God exalts himself, he draws attention to the one Person who can make us happy forever. . .

But what about before god had created anyone for whom attention to himself could be drawn? Was he exalting himself then?

Perhaps I'm missing the point here -- it seems to me that a proper god would neither demand nor need exultation, unless that god was also an egomaniac. Clearly god does not need it, even on the Christian's terms, and it is not at all clear that worshiping gods is on balance a benefit to anyone at all; the only way this sort of claim could work is if it was possible to identify when the correct god was being worshiped, and if the 'benefits' gained from doing so were measurably different from a qualitatively identical set of 'benefits' enjoyed when worshiping different gods.

Not only is that not at all clear, but it seems to be unable to get out of the starting gate: the 'benefits' of which you speak are at best impossible to separate from qualitatively identical 'benefits' received from the worship of myriad incompatible gods, and unless you're unaware, it's evidently nigh impossible to specifically identify your [version of] god as the correct god.

While I appreciate the desire to make [your version of] god appear less egomaniacal, the definition of 'egomaniacal' fits your god's descriptions particularly well. The motivation for this post seems to stem from a desire to distance the negative implications of egomania from the attributes attributed to [your version of] god, presumably as a counter to claims that 'because god is an egomaniac, it shouldn't be worshiped,' or something along those lines. I think the simplest and best response to such a claim would be to simply note that being an egomaniac and being the proper subject of worship are not mutually exclusive. Surely the most beautiful woman deserves to be described as the most beautiful, even if she's nonetheless a cast-iron bitch.

In any event, the sermon excerpt is somewhat puzzling -- the question as to just when it's appropriate for god to "exalt himself" is immediately raised, and the available responses seem to call into question just why god found it appropriate to create at all. This is a common thread, of course, but it's also an as-yet unanswered (at least, not satisfactorily answered) question. For versions of Christianity which accept a hell of eternal torment in which two-thirds of humanity will reside, if god prefers that none be subjected to that torment yet knows that two-thirds will do so if humans are created (and allowed to thrive), it seems clear that a much better course of action would be to not create.

As I said, however, even if we ignore that elephant in the room, in order to get what this speaker seems to conclude, we'd have to also have some means by which we can measure the impact of worshiping the correct [version of] god, and distinguish those effects from placebo-like effects of worshiping other things. At present, we can neither definitively identify the correct [version of] god nor distinguish these 'benefits' from worshiping, say, a rock or a number.

tl;dr: What is the point? By your own description (or so I assume), god fits perfectly the definition of egomaniac. You can neither get what you want nor get what you need from attempts to make god not look like an egomaniac.

God is not an egomaniac... ...he draws attention to the one Person who can make us happy forever, himself.... ...He is an infinitely glorious, all-satisfying God, offering us everlasting and supreme joy in himself.

Wat? Those are about the most egotistical statements imaginable. The fact that he makes people so that they will like him, that's a little bit creepy too.

His thesis does not require more of a rebuttal than the mention (and understanding) of special pleading. If you want more vigorous debates, you will need OPs that are not glaring logical fallacies.

From your initial response, it seems that you are not familiar with the "special pleading" fallcy...my response was not a special pleading.

EDIT: Using words like "cowardly" creates what is called an "ad hominem" fallacy. You really don't understand fallacies at all do you? Google "common logical fallacies" and you will very easily find information that will be invaluable in better presenting your ideas. Good luck!

Equivocation is pretty close, but not quite right. Equivocation generally means that a word has multiple definitions, and you don't distinguish them properly -- one part of your argument uses one definition, and another part uses another definition. For example:

Downloading movies via BitTorrent is piracy.

From #1: If you download movies via BitTorrent, you are a pirate.

Pirates commit armed robberies on the high seas.

From #2 and #3, if you download movies via BitTorrent, you also commit armed robberies on the high seas.

The problem is that #1 and #3 are using different meanings of the word "piracy".

I don't think equivocation is quite right here, because OP is not using a definition of "egotistical" that I've heard before. When atheists say "God is an egomaniac", we generally don't mean "God exalts himself in a way that does not benefit others." We probably mean something like "God is extremely self-centered, unnecessarily so."

OP's quotation says it's arguing that God is not egomaniachal. It seems to be saying that it's OK for God to be egomaniachal, which is a different argument.

I suppose you could argue that it's necessary for God to be as self-centered as he is, but OP's quotation doesn't do that.

I think it's a strawman, honestly. I don't think any atheists have been claiming that God is, specifically, self-exalting in a way that benefits no one else. But it feels like an equivocation, because in setting up that strawman, there's a lot of bizarre redefinition of words going on.

Really, it's hard to draw a formal fallacy here, because I'm being lazy and using just the quotation, I haven't gone back to read the entire article. But that's a secondary complaint -- I get just as annoyed with people who link to someone else's argument instead of presenting their own. I don't have a problem with using other people's arguments, so long as you're actually defending them yourself and thus participating in the debate. So in that sense, I can see why someone would want to dismiss this attempt so easily -- OP was every bit as lazy, and arguably deserves a lazy response -- but it's really not obvious how this is special pleading, and really, "OP is lazy too" is a tu quoque anyway.

I think it's a strawman, honestly. I don't think any atheists have been claiming that God is, specifically, self-exalting in a way that benefits no one else. But it feels like an equivocation, because in setting up that strawman, there's a lot of bizarre redefinition of words going on.

I'd like to submit a sweeping majority of these debate threads, and the atheist argument as direct rebuttal.

The OP separates standards without giving justification for the standards. It's circular. God is great, therefore, his actions, which would be different if he were not great, are also great. So now he's great, because he is not doing something wrong, even though it would be wrong, by God's own standards, if you or I did it.

No, #2 is not correct and not representative of OP's claim. The claim is that there is an exception to #1 which applies in the case of any being which fits the criterion of "a being who can make all humans happy forever." There is then the additional claim that God is the only such being.

Also, no one claimed #1. Claiming that God is egomaniachal does not imply that egomania is undesirable.

Even allowing this, and the claim that follows ("God's self-exaltation is loving,"), does not redefine egomania to apply only in cases where self-exaltation is not loving.

Showing that an argument consists of a logic fallacy is quite a complete rebuttal even though you don't seem to think so. It IS a furthering if the debate. Your use of the words lazy and fly by are accusations that are derogatory and do not rebut my assertion that the OP includes a giant fallacy.

EDIT: You also called me a hack. Apparently because you didn't agree with my assertion.

Dude, you're embarrassing. I'm on your side, and I wish I wasn't, if this is how you argue.

Ad-hominem is a fallacy only in the following form: "You are X, therefore your argument is invalid," where X is an irrelevant (but undesirable) personal trait.

Claiming that you are lazy is an ad-hom attack, but is not a fallacy. It is not at all fallacious to say "Your argument is invalid, and you're a moron." Claiming that you flew by without actually participating in debate is, similarly, an ad-hom attack, but not a fallacy.

Claiming that your argument is lazy, or appears to be the result of a "fly-by" (in this case, that it's basically a one-word response), is not an ad-hom at all. It is an attack on your argument, not you. It is also not a claim that your argument is wrong, only that it is lazy.

So it is not an ad-hominem at all for me to say, as an atheist, that your argument is lazy and moronic. It is an ad-hominem, but not fallacious, for me to suggest that posting such a lazy argument, repeatedly, suggests that you're either a moron or an asshole, and likely both. From this, I can also deduce (logically, and not fallaciously) that such behavior, being well outside the norms of logical debate, reflects poorly on any group you supposedly represent -- which leads me to my conclusion, that I am embarrassed that my flair resembles yours with how poorly you've handled this debate.

None of these claims imply that your argument is wrong. I've addressed that elsewhere.

I find it sad, that in light of the theist pitch for humility as the base of all virtues, the highest humility of believing God does as He pleases, even if we don't understand why it pleases Him, would be found so arrogant. Or stupid. Or any other response of than giving tolerance to what you find intolerable, the same way the Christian, or Bible believer gives tolerance to God.

I can't get atheists to understand, or admit they believe, that I am uncomfortable with a great deal of the Biblical revealing of God's Character, much less the cursed wicked world He placed me in. Yet I still believe.

Faith is still foolish to believers SOMETIMES, whether they'll admit it or not. Even our fairy tale book says the wisdom of the world will not accept the foolhardy Cross.

I think the part claimed as egotistical is the leap that a God that does whatever he pleases must be particularly concerned about such trivialities in the individual lives of his believers: such as winning a Football game, for example. Or getting a 3.5% instead of a 3.9% on your mortgage rate. You know. The stuff we witness each and every day on our Facebook wall suffixed or prefixed with "Praise God", followed by a litany of friends and relatives claiming they were praying for this to happen, and that God clearly answered such prayers.

Perhaps you aren't one of those. Fine. Then said claim of egoism probably would not apply to you. But it certainly does to a massive amount of others.

I can't get atheists to understand, or admit they believe, that I am uncomfortable with a great deal of the Biblical revealing of God's Character, much less the cursed wicked world He placed me in. Yet I still believe.

Oh no, we get that you may be uncomfortable with it yet still believe. There's a word for it, "indoctrination." You believe, against all evidence and reason. I think you guys call it "faith."